Missing in action

Last night, I ended up at the Indian Motorcycle Cafe, a lounge/dance club/restaurant/clothing store along the King Street club strip. While the company that actually made Indian Motorcycles has been out of business for fifty years, someone bought the rights to the brand name and created a line of clothing that features the logo. The club takes the branding up another notch — the Indian logo is everywhere: on the beechwood-and-metal panelling (the designers read a lot of wallpaper* magazine) , the felt of the pool tables, the museum-like displays that showcase miniture models of Indian motorcycles and old advertisements, the frosted glass behind the bars, and even the glass cases for the firehoses. While they never charge a cover nor for coat check, the place screams expensive, with dozen of leather armchairs arranged around coffee tables, a couple of gas fireplaces and pairs of giant plasma computer monitors behind most of the bars, flashing old photos of happy Indian motorcycle riders and advertisements for cheap martini nights. It looks like yet another one of those places from the “club scene” of a movie, or perhaps a Smirnoff Ice commercial. It’s somewhat yuppified cheese, but being an Asian and a Honda driver, I have a high degree of tolerance for such places.

Paul and I were there, attending a farewell party for Sarah, one of his classmates from his Taekwondo class. Paul left early, but I had bumped into my sister-in-law Grace while there, and decided to hang out with her and her friend Anita for a little while longer. We stayed on the extremely crowded dance floor for a while, and I noticed something was missing.

As I’ve mentioned in some other postings, Accordion City is a very multicultural city. This is reflected in a lot of dance clubs, where you’ll see people of every race and dozens of nationalities, and compared to the States, inter-racial dating is as big a deal (trust me, I’ve done it in both countries). A good number of the couples were mixed race, a clear violation of what was until recently part of the Bob Jones University code of conduct. Around me on the dance floor were:

• black men (mostly with clean-shaven heads)
• white men (mostly with clean-shaven heads)
• white women (mostly in boobalicious sleeveless tops, in spite of the twelve-below temperatures and the snowstorm raging outside)
• middle eastern men (clean-shaven heads)
• middle eastern women (boobalicious sleeveless tops)
• south Asian men (hair spiked with graviton particle gel)
• south Asian women (boobalicious sleeveless tops)
• east Asian men (hair spiked with graviton particle gel, myself included)
• east Asian women (boobalicious sleeveless tops)

…all shakin’ their rumps to Nelly’s Hot In Here (So Take off All Your Clothes)…

…but practically no black women (and therefore no boobalicious sleeveless tops). At a club where the music is a hodgepodge of hip-hop, R&B, house, reggae and dancehall, this is extremely unusual. This is certainly not the case at other clubs that put out the same vibe and cater to the same sort of clientele.

Anyone got a theory as to why this is so, or did all the black women hear the weather report and say “I’m making it a Blockbuster night”? Your comments, please.